The Brothers

I had heard of The Brothers for years before I actually saw it. Luckily, Talking Pictures TV began their repeats of it on Thursday nights paired with the original Van Der Valk, which is top class scheduling.

The Brothers is the story of three brothers (the clue is in the title) who inherit a haulage business when their Dad dies, but they have to run it alongside his mistress, which causes tensions with the Mum. The characterisations are brilliant, particularly Alpha Male eldest brother Edward who wants things his way or not at all. His two younger brothers bring their own talents to the boardroom table too, and the prim, manipulative Mother orchestrates things from afar, gently influencing their professional and personal lives.

I love the wives in this - model Jill and vamp Ann Hammond. Ann is a forgotten gay icon, always with a cigarette, an arched eyebrow, and a waspish comment (and always in the midst of an affair). The old school Mother is well worth it too with her curiously dated diction and delicate accent. She's a piece of work on the quiet.

The boardroom scenes remind me of the "BUSINESS, MARJORIE!" sketches from A Bit Of Fry and Laurie, but they are good studies of class at the time. The Hammonds are working class done good, and Bill Riley is the uneasy working class guy who somehow found himself on the board. Above all of them are the bankers (notably Colin Baker), and you can really sense the Thatcher years on the horizon.

It really sucks you in, and it would be interesting to see it done nowadays.

I've been watching The Brothers every Thursday evening on Talking Pictures and, whilst getting thoroughly engrossed in it, snippets of it were very familiar.

So it was with a "hah!" of excitement that i stumbled across my old diaries for 1974 and 1975 recently which didn't just inform me that, as a teenager, I never missed this show on a Sunday evening but that the character I most associated with was Brian (yes, I eventually became an accountant, like him).

Watching it now I expect it's easier to see the warning signs (especially with Paul Merroney) but at the age of 14 one lacks the experience of life to immediately spot a baddie.

The diary also tells me that the sitcom that followed The Brothers on a Sunday evening (at least it did in my region) was "Sadie, It's Cold Outside" which I watched but have zero recollection of! Well, it was half a century ago now.

Has The Brothers aged well? I'd say yes, very much so. The business and personal issues it highlights are still issues in many families and companies 50 years later. I spent 35 years of my working life in family-run businesses and the portrayal in this series is very true-to-life....all the way down to how non-family members address those on the board.

One minor point - the wallpaper in Brian & Ann's house is of a design which would induce a hallucinogenic trip just by looking at it. No wonder they had difficulty communicating - they were probably in a trance.

I have just re-watched all 92 episodes (not having seen them since I watched the original broadcast in the 70s) and greatly enjoyed them.

The drama centres on a family-run road haulage firm whose ownership becomes complicated after the death of its founder with business, family, and other personal issues becoming intertwined.

All the acting is of high quality and the balance of personal vs business story strands is largely OK although in series 3 and 4 things get a bit bogged down in one particular marriage and the balance suffers somewhat.

One major quality that distinguishes it from modern drama touching on similar topics is that the financial and business content is written realistically and from an informed perspective. Today's TV (and radio) is written by children who know damn all about business and trot out rubbish plucked out of thin air with no basis in reality.

Series 1-6 are truly excellent. In series 7 things do start to get a bit tired. The characters are still compelling but the plot ideas are becoming thin and it is a blessing that it was stopped before it became a disappointing soapy shell of itself.

All in all after episode 92 one is left with entirely happy memories of an excellent drama.

'The Brothers' was a cut-price British precursor to 'Dallas' and 'Dynasty' set in the glamorous, cut-throat world of...truck haulage. This family saga was a BBC Sunday night fixture in the 1970's and acquired cult status, in amongst other countries, the Netherlands and Israel (as confirmed by another contributor). In each run the Hammond brothers faced domestic crises and attempted takeovers from ruthless business rivals - in successive series an abrasive Aussie played by Mark 'Taggart' McManus; the slimey Paul Merrony played by Colin Baker and a bizarre aircraft hire outfit run by the sultry Kate O'Mara and the sozzled Mike Pratt. The Brothers survived losing its leading man, Glynn Owen , early on and the fact that his replacement in the role of Ted Hammond, Edward O'Connell was nothing like him in appearance or character. O'Connell subsequently tried to quit the show to become a painter but was lured back. The beautiful Gabrielle Drake, wife of one of the brothers, quit between series and was promptly bumped off in an off-screen car crash. The show was held together by the redoubtable matriarch Mary Hammond, played by Jean Anderson (later in 'Tenko'), who was an excellent actress and a close friend in real life of her arch-enemy on the show, Jennifer, formerly her late husband's mistress and now married to her eldest son. The show finished rather abruptly while it was still very popular and you got the impression that any other TV station would have flogged the concept for several more series. The BBC later made a sort of camped-up version for the 1980's called 'Howard's Way', set in a boatyard.

It's great to see this show has been picked up for a re-run from Series 1 by Talking Pictures TV.

The children of a highly successful businessman fight to carry on the business, each with their own idea of how it should be run and ultimately seeking overall control. Various outsiders including rival entrepreneurs and financial whizzkids want a slice of the action. Add in the spice of a long-hidden illicit relationship, ongoing conflicts between hurt and betrayed parties, and you have a storyline which could easily find its place on mainstream TV today. No, it's not "Succession", but could easily be seen as a 1970's "ancestor" to that phenomenon.